This whole thread is very much worth reading. Where I part ways from Lyman is that I *do* ‘begrudge communities for their mythologies.’ The country will have a mythology. It is just a question of which one. This project attempts an answer to that. Is it a good one?https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1163204559944245250 …
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The message of the 1619 project is that slavery is *the* defining fact and feature of American history. That there slaves in 1619 is true. But think of other things that happened just within that time range:
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1st settlement by certain NA tribes (eg Comanche), 1st colonization by Europeans, 1st slaves on American territory, first colonies by Anglos, 1st church house in America, 1st religious colony in America, 1st war between colonists and NA group, 1st legislative assembly.
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Other things that have actually happened in American history: secession from Britain, ratification of the constitution, westward expansion, invention of the telegram, emancipation laws, universal emancipation, formation of Standard Oil, 1000+ labor strikes...
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Any of these could be the foundation of a national mythology. The point is not whether they happened, but we we make them mean. Let me give you the obvious example.
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In 1607 America had its very first Anglican Sunday service. Or at least the first built in a building intended for that purpose. The oldest protestant churchouse on the American continent preceded the first slaves sold in English by a decade.
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It is not hard to imagine a project which goes “for a long time America’s public mythology has defined itself by 1776. But that date, with all of its secular celebrations, obscures what has really been at the heart of American life before this secular founding: Christianity.”
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This is the central truth of the central-truth argument. There are a lot of things you can argue touch everything in American history -- Christianity, warfare, even nightshade crops. But someone who positions one of them as _the_ center of US history is a fanatic or an idiot.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.